Ed eats

New Madras
3, Gandoffli Street,
Buġibba
Tel: 2157 2107

Food: 6/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 5/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 6.5/10

What does one do with half a compliment? The optimist will ignore the half that isn’t a compliment. The pessimist will do the opposite. Alas, we’re human and we don’t really deal with dichotomies well, so we’re never entirely one or the other. We might feel mainly positive or negative, whichever part of the glass you’re used to observing, but never entirely so.

I’ll illustrate with a little story. Dramatis personae in this little tale being a young lady who puts up with me as her form of self-punishment, a woman whose name we will never know, a man whose name we will never know, and some innocent bystanders.

The setting is that of one of many sidestreets of Buġibba that look practically the same to me. The time was late evening, the sun casting a gorgeous orange glow over the bay that isn’t visible from this side street but that enchanted us as we drove along the seaside desperately seeking a parking spot.

I was walking purposefully towards dinner, my suffering companion in tow. The man and woman who form the rest of the cast were walking towards us, in that kind of collision course that determines the weakest link. I’m a beta male and he was an alpha male, so I stepped off the pavement, allowing them an uninterrupted passage to wherever they were heading.

He said something that I didn’t get but in the time the lady was within earshot she spoke, pointing at me and speaking Maltese. My camera and costume must have turned me into a tourist because she felt no shame passing a weak compliment, presuming I wouldn’t understand. The fact that it was preceded by a very emphatic ‘but’ meant that she felt she ought to make up for something that I hadn’t heard.

Had I been even humanly conceited I’d have worried about what the guy had just said or enjoyed the bit I’d heard. Instead I turned my attention to the mistake that had been made. The presumption that I was, in their collective opinion, most likely a foreigner. Walking further made me realise why. There was not a single Maltese person in sight. Or the Maltese people were dressed up as tourists and speaking a foreign language just to mess with me.

This is likely why I don’t visit Buġibba. I know there are a lot of people who wouldn’t spend their summers elsewhere, but I just don’t get the place. It feels too much like a holiday resort to me and I’m not too keen on holiday resorts. I ended up in Buġibba because of a restaurant recommendation, and that’s reason enough for me to suffer the mild inconvenience of being mistaken for a tourist.

The restaurant was New Madras, an Indian restaurant that, true to its name, actually bothers to focus on the south of India. I’m always moaning about generalis-ations like Indian or Chinese food, mainly because there are over a billion people living in each of those countries.

We can tell the difference between a loaf of Maltese bread bought in Qormi and one bought in Gozo. Now multiply our popul-ation by a number that would take you a week to count and ask yourself whether you can say ‘Indian food’ without insulting the great nation. Saying that you’re cooking food from the south of the country has at least narrowed this down to a population that is only counted in hundreds of millions.

When we’d finally parked and walked and been mistaken for tourists and walked a little more, we made it to the New Madras. It is actually very centrally located, just off the main square, so my tourist trap alarm bells started ringing.

Once inside, we were greeted very politely by the man who was running the front of house and seated at a table adjacent to the plate glass that makes up most of the facade. It is a pity that the view is of a number of nondescript blocks of flats that remind me why I don’t visit Buġibba often.

The menus contain most of the dishes we’re used to seeing on Indian restaurant menus that serve the anglicised version of the subcontinent’s cuisine. They also add to the Madras offerings as well as a few dishes that are specific to the region.

I read through the starters and immediately decided I’d go for the enigmatically-named Chicken 65. I was pretty sure there was a good reason for the name and I later looked it up. It seems this was a famous recipe from a particular restaurant in Chennai, India, and that it managed to work its way into the south Indian cookbook. Now we know. Thank the internet for Google.

I also wanted to try a regional speciality for main course and picked the Chicken Chettinadu, a fiery speciality that gets three little peppers next to it. The better half picked the Lamb Madras, sticking with the restaurant’s namesake. Uncertain about a starter, she asked the maitre d’ about the pakoras and he informed us that they’re coated in a thin batter made of lentil flour, selling the dish immediately.

When I thought we’d finished our order he swept in, deftly asking what vegetable dish we’d like and listing a couple of them. I just picked the potato and cauliflower without thinking. He suggested two portions of rice instead of one and then quickly asked whether “Madam would like her water still or sparkling”. He’s great at upselling. I wouldn’t have ordered a second portion of rice and would not remotely have considered adding a vegetable dish to my main course. When I over-order, it is always by adding yet another flaming meat dish.

We added an inexpensive bottle of Australian wine from a very well-priced menu and our host returned shortly after, serving it like we’d asked for a bottle of Bordeaux’s finest. He was consistently helpful and almost too polite, showing deference at times. He turned out to be star of the show and the most memorable part of our experience.

The chicken was tender and I only stopped eating when I’d consumed the lot

Our starters took a while and I took this to mean they were freshly prepared. My Chicken 65 had been marinated in a pleasantly spicy blend of herbs and was grilled in strips. Thin strips have more contact area with the marinade, so these were bursting with flavour. They’d been grilled a little too much, though, and would have been just perfect if they’d been more tender. The shrimp pakoras were more enjoyable, if much more delicately flavoured. The batter forms a crisp and dry shell for the tasty little ball of shrimp inside.

Our main courses were served, once again after a perceptible wait, by our host and with some assistance from the kitchen to make sure our table was laden with food in a few seconds. Attentive service means they do this with the efficiency of a professional Tetris player, fitting all the little bowls and dishes into a neat puzzle that filled every inch of empty space on our table.

I decided to taste the veg first, mainly because I had no idea why I’d ordered it. It was fine, if a little underwhelming. Next up was the Madras to leave the hottest for last. The Madras, with its two little peppers on the menu, was quite hot but entirely manageable and creamy and slightly sweet. This was let down slightly by the lamb itself that hadn’t quite achieved that beautiful tenderness that a slow cook so often yields.

Onwards and upwards to the Chettinadu, the sauce was very salty, fiery and rich with aniseed and cumin that was also peeking through from the Jeera rice. The chicken was tender and I only stopped eating when I’d consumed the lot. The heat remained long after the dish had been dispatched, and alas, so did the salt.

I tried to attack the mound of remaining rice by adding all the sauce and most of the remaining Madras, but the sheer quantity was more than I could handle so, when offered desserts, I just couldn’t bring myself to order any, even after I’d heard them being described quite poetically. I settled for tea and asked for the bill.

We paid €75 for the lot, more than I’d reasonably expect to pay, particularly when the prices of main courses rarely reach the €10 mark. The service, polite and attentive, comes at a price, that of tempting you into over-ordering. And the insatiable optimist in me can live with that.

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